Today on Midday, it's Midday at the Movies, our monthly look at films, filmmaking and the movie industry. Tom's guests are our movie-maven regulars, Washington Post film critic Ann Hornaday and Maryland Film Festival founder and former director, Jed Dietz.
We discuss the question of whether pandemic-weary filmgoers feel it's safe to return to movie theaters. And we get Ann and Jed's takes on some of the current cinema, including the re-release of Sankofa, Ethiopian-American filmmaker Haile Gerima's 1993 masterpiece about slavery, now streaming on Netflix; My Name Is Pauli Murray, an Amazon-produced documentary film co-directed by Julie Cohen and Betsy West (RBG) that examines the life and ideas of Pauli Murray (1910-1985), a non-binary Black lawyer, activist and poet who influenced both Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Thurgood Marshall; Nuclear Family, independent director Ry Russo-Young's new autobiographical documentary series now on HBO Max about her same-sex parents and the unexpected complications they faced in raising their family; The Eyes of Tammy Faye, director Michael Showalter's dramatic adaptation of the documentary about the disgraced televangelist, played by Jessica Chastain; and The Card Counter, writer-director Paul Schrader's latest portrait of alienation and redemption starring Oscar Isaac, and now showing at The Charles and area theaters.
As always, we welcome listeners comments and questions.
Ann Hornaday joins us on our digital line; Jed Dietz is on Zoom.
